Armed with only one sword and a shield, the brave warrior wasn't giving up on his battle with an opponent far beyond him in every way – strength, speed, deadly attacks. The simple explanation for that was that it was a dragon. They were chasing each other through an old long deserted castle, which talked about it's old glory only through it's tall walls, three times taller than this mythological beast. Of course, the dragon was now the master of this large estate, and maybe the reason behind their fight lied in the right to proprietorship. In any case, our warrior was in trouble now, and he was running to get behind one of the big pillars that were still standing and supporting the ceiling. Luckily, before the dragon managed to do anything, he got out of it's way and to a safe shelter. The pillar was wide enough to grant him cover from the fire the dragon could shoot at him. Although, he found something else concerning that to be weird: namely, the dragon wasn't breathing fire as much as he had expected it to at all. It had the chances, it seemed, to burn him to a crisp – why hasn't it done that? Before he could give an answer to himself on that question, the dragon peeked from the side of the column and he had to get out of there as fast as possible.Damn it, he thought – all around were scattered parts of the structure; he had to constantly keep maneuvering through them. Although, the good side of them was that they offered him protection. He was reminded of that right away by a flame that shot above him, far away from his head. Now he needed to take the chance, he thought, to surprise the dragon from somewhere, because it had lost every sight of him. He ran downhill, through the cracked floor, planning on going around and coming from it's side or back. Unfortunately, he tripped, and the floor additionally broke beneath him. Falling, he rolled downhill and soon reached an unfenced edge. Luckily, he stopped before he was in danger of falling off the edge and into the abyss that was beyond it; because the castle was carved on the side of the mountain's slope. He got up. Like this wasn't enough unfortunate turn of events, the floor started cracking beneath him too. The whole part on which he was standing started breaking off. He ran. In the moment when the rock lunged down he jumped off, sure he would be able to catch the edge. Accordingly to his good calculation, he made it. However, climbing up now wasn't an easy task at all. The weight of his armor was dragging him down and he was forced to throw away his shield so he would have any chances at all. His sword was now on the side of his waist. He only needed to lift up his free arm... Suddenly he felt a great pressure on the hand with which he was holding onto the edge. He looked up. The dragon leaned over him in all it's greatness, firmly pressing his hand to the rock.That was it. Only one fire attack and he's done for. The great beast didn't move. After a few moments which seemed like an eternity, staring into each other's eyes, it made its move. But it wasn't the move he had expected. It got his giant paw off his hand and turned around, walking away. Bewildered, the warrior almost forgot his life was hanging by a thread. When he came to, he swung his other arm up and grabbed on. With great effort, he climbed up. Breathing heavily, he turned towards his adversary. It calmly staggered into the darkened interior of the castle. Like it had nothing more to do with him. The man couldn't move. Stunned, he was trying to figure out what just happened, while big beads of sweat rolled out of his thick hair over his face and onto the ground. He lost. He was defeated, but not destroyed. Though he couldn't get how – wasn't the goal of this fight for one of them to end up dead?No, he thought, it wasn't. One of them was supposed to lose the battle. It was obvious from the very start that he wasn't the winner and he felt stupid because it was now clear to him that the dragon knew that. He slowly lifted himself off the ground. He felt capable enough to go on. He headed towards the exit of the castle, the same way he got in. He carried defeat with him, but a new knowledge as well – a valuable lesson about a noble fight. And that knowledge was enough to give him a reason to walk out like a man.

A very short one-shot inspired by this: [link] ("Moment of Truth/Friend or Foe (full view, left)" by *reedymanedkelpie).Actually, there were a series of things that happened to me today that lead to writing this, but *reedymanedkelpie gets the main credit. I saw this scene on TV where a man fell off the side of the balcony while being chased by another guy and I thought - what it would be like to be a cop that was chasing a criminal and that criminal was the one falling off; it'd be cool to save his life (you're not chasing him to kill him - just to bring him to justice).And then I saw the shot of this nice sculpture and the story wrote itself. The original work has a story of it's own, but, it isn't really the same one as mine. Anyway, I really needed to give the artist the credit.Hooray for community power!

I loved this! It just so happened that while I was reading this, I was also listening to a piece from the Skyrim OST. It fit so perfectly The sculpture was beautiful, so I can see why it'd inspire you to write thisGood job!

Thanks so much for giving me the link to this. It's great to see my work inspiring others in their own work. The action reads a little like the description for a movie -- it's very visual. You know, I think you could work on this more and expand it into a long story.